Posts Tagged Economics

The anti-choice movement has done its damndest to isolate the issue of abortion. Conservative politicians are prone to dismissing reproductive rights as a divisive “social issue” that’s less serious than–and completely disconnected from–the “bread and butter” economic issues their voters supposedly care about more. But a new poll commissioned by the National Institute for Reproductive Health suggests that Americans are not fooled—instead, they easily make the connections between access to abortion, economic stability, and women’s broader gender equality.

The anti-choice movement has done its damndest to isolate the issue of abortion. Conservative politicians are prone to dismissing reproductive rights as a divisive “social issue” that’s less serious than–and completely disconnected from–the “bread and butter” ...

We’re thrilled to see that The Nation is launching a new roundtable blog called The Curve, “where feminists will hash out economic issues and intervene in feminist debates from an economic perspective.” The editors explain that they’ve been frustrated by two phenomena:

One is the way in which women’s voices are so frequently sidelined in economic debates. Our voices are few and far between in the economics blogosphere. It’s striking that almost none of the reviewers of Thomas Piketty’s groundbreaking Capital in the Twenty-First Centurywere women. And as Media Matters recently showed, women are rarely invited to discuss the economy on cable news.

The flipside of this problem is that, even amongst ourselves, feminists don’t talk enough about economics. Too often, discussions ...

We’re thrilled to see that The Nation is launching a new roundtable blog called The Curve, “where feminists will hash out economic issues and intervene in feminist debates from an economic perspective.” The editors explain that ...

Last year, only 17% of attendees at the World Economic Forum’s annual conference at Davos were women. This year, it’s 15%. It’s basically a game of Where’s Waldo, except imagine that Waldo represents over half of the world’s population, is trying to shape policy that will affect the world’s entire population, and is wearing a pantsuit instead of a stripy turtleneck. And check out this Olympic-level buck-passing from the conference’s managing director:

Last year, only 17% of attendees at the World Economic Forum’s annual conference at Davos were women. This year, it’s 15%. It’s basically a game of Where’s Waldo, except imagine that Waldo ...

But that doesn’t mean Republicans aren’t trying their best to cut off both. At The Prospect, friend of the blog Amelia Thomson-Deveaux has a piece about how, despite concerted efforts to cut off the supply of abortions, demand remains unchanged. Thomson-Deveaux gets to the heart of the matter, which is that anti-choice advocates have a completely different worldview from many of the people seeking abortions, one that makes it much harder for them to influence demand, even if that were possible.

But that doesn’t mean Republicans aren’t trying their best to cut off both. At The Prospect, friend of the blog Amelia Thomson-Deveaux has a piece about how, despite concerted efforts to cut off the supply of ...

A new report from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research shows that our progress in closing the gender wage gap has stalled–and actually backslid last year. The ratio of women’s to men’s median weekly full-time earnings was 80.9 percent in 2012, a decline of more than one percentage point from 2011. In fact, you have to go all the way back to the 1990s to see any significant, sustained improvement on the gap. “Since 2001 the annual gender earnings gap narrowed by only about one percentage point.” Dismal.

You may not have heard of him prior to this week, but Felix Salmon is one of the most influential business writers in, well, the biz. He drew ire last week, including from prominent feminists such as Irin Carmon of Salon, for publishing the following comments in an essay on Maria Popova and her “blogonomics” (read: her blog’s business model):

“The consistently positive and upbeat tone to Popova’s blog might generate healthy Amazon income as a side-effect, but it’s also genuine: she’s one of those bloggers – Gina Trapani is another very successful example – who have no time for snark and who naturally look for things to celebrate rather than things to tear down…

To a certain extent, this is ...

You may not have heard of him prior to this week, but Felix Salmon is one of the most influential business writers in, well, the biz. He drew ire last week, including from prominent feminists such as ...

Economists have determined that male CEOs who have daughters tend to increase the salaries of their employees, particularly if their daughter is firstborn. According to a study presented at the American Economic Association, “female employees get the larger boost, with their salary tending to grow by 1.1%, compared with a 0.6% gain for male employees.”

Overall, however, all employees’ salaries tend to decrease when male CEOs have children, to the tune of 0.2% per year. The salary benefits are exclusive to male CEOs having daughters.

Why? The study hints that men possibly become more empathetic when they have daughters and care more for their employees’ standard of living. The authors also speculate that men may respect their wives more after chidlbirth, therefore ...

Last night, Liza Mundy, author of The Richer Sex, was the guest on The Colbert Report. Mundy’s book is really important, and if you haven’t already read it, I suggest you go borrow it from your local library this weekend. It’s a look at how the economy changes at both a macro and a micro level when women become breadwinners. How do our ideas about gender change when “man” and “provider” are no longer synonymous? How do our experiences of sex change when our definitions of masculinity and femininity shift? These are crucial questions, for feminism and for society at large.

Search

We need your help!

Get Our Newsletter

New posts and Feministing news delivered to your inbox weekly!

Want to write for us?

All Feministing posts are written by the site’s collective of regular columnists and editors. Though we don’t currently accept guest submissions, we have an open platform Community site to which anyone can contribute. We often promote our favorite Community posts on the main site. And Community bloggers who consistently impress us may to be invited to become regular Feministing columnists..